I went to Madaba today to enroll in a mosaic class at a workshop owned and run by a mosaic artist and instructor who also teaches at the Madaba Institute for Mosaic Art and Restoration (previously The School of Mosaics of Madaba).

It took me and my sister a bit of time to get to the exact location of the workshop, thanks to several natives who gave us wrong directions. Our instructor gave us a tour of the Institute, a modern workshop which awards diplomas to students who have finished high school, both in the production and restoration of mosaic art in the model of the Italian school.

We also went to Virgin Mary Church at the Madaba Archaeological Park, which was an enriching experience especially since it seems that I really like ancient churches and church ruins for some reason. They feel entirely holy to me — to be complemented by incense and a dark mood listening to Gregorian.

The Virgin Mary Church even had two subterranean chambers where the monks used to store food and other items. Very eerie, I loved it! Perfect with the above mentioned settings and mood.

Contemporary mosaic at the institute:

Virgin Mary Church mosaic:

More pics here:

Mosaic Class in Madaba

Needless to say, I am very much looking forward to the start of this course. I’ve been wanting to learn this art for years. The downer is that I will have to cut my nails before classes start, and I found a better-looking lion than the one I plan to make.

Nart TV (National Adiga Radio & Television) is such a great idea that I can’t believe a similar initiative was not born years ago. The TV station aims to reach Circassian viewers and to spread Circassian traditions, culinary arts, and language. This is important because as the official website of Nart TV says “the language is almost not spoken within the many Circassian communities today and virtually about to go extinct among our youth of Circassian descent. The disappearance of the language would not only be a loss of world’s linguistic heritage, it would also open the door to the gradual loss of Circassian culture around the world.”

The Circassian flag, used in Nart TV logo.

The word “nart” means chevalier or horseman and it’s the name of one of my cousins. My own parents (both of them, which I find very cute) always have the tv on Nart to watch either dancing, or traditional cooking, or even to learn the language. My mother, albeit Circassian, did not receive a solid linguistic instruction from her mother or father. Living in the heart of Amman at the time, right around the Roman Amphitheater, she was brought up to speak Arabic rather than Circassian. She understands it though, and can speak it if spoken to, but she never could make a serious effort to teach us her language.

This is heart warming really. I think what the young people at Nart TV are doing is a commendable effort, and a large part of it is actually volunteer work. Another one of my cousins is a volunteer there, and very much encouraged by his family, as I imagine all the other Adiga youth in Jordan are, to help the channel any way possible. I heard they had a bazaar the other day to support the channel. It’s all good.

They should also enlist the help of the talented Circassian “visual artists;” be they graphic designers, art producers, photographers, or others. The Circassian community in Jordan -at least- boasts of an impressive number of these talents and they would do well to help educate young generations about their culture. I also think on the long run they have to have solid partnerships with well-to-do Circassians and corporations, or to generate substantial funds through ads and other endeavors, in order to remain in business. Even if it’s not a for-profit project, it still needs money to function.

Just the other day I was thinking of the role that women in leadership must play to help society move towards gender equality by cooperating with women’s civil society organizations. This duty is often clouded by “differences” between women in various leadership posts.

At the call of the The Jordanian National Commission for Women (JNCW), women ministers, deputies, mayors, and others met last week to discuss ways to cooperate to lobby for women’s causes in the country. This is a good step forward I think, but I withhold judgment until something tangible comes out of it — like suggestions to achieve equality for women in the various laws.

Take this an example of legal and social discrimination against women in Jordan:

20-year-old kills his sister in so-called honour crime

By Rana Husseini

AMMAN - The criminal prosecutor on Saturday charged a 20-year-old man with the premeditated murder of his younger married sister in the Jordan Valley for reasons related to family honour, official sources said.

The suspect reportedly confessed to stabbing his sibling to death at their family home a day after she was released from custody by the administrative governor, the source told The Jordan Times.

After the incident, the suspect waited for the police to come and arrest him and when they arrived at the scene, he claimed he killed his sibling, who was married at the age of 16 and had a one-year-old child, to cleanse his family’s honour, the source added.

His sister’s husband accused her of seeing other men and she went missing from his home a few days before the incident, according to the source.

“The authorities found the victim and she was detained for a while by the administrative governor, who handed her over to her family on Thursday after her father signed a JD5,000 guarantee that he would not harm his daughter,” the source said.

The victim went home with her father on Thursday and on Friday morning her brother murdered her, the source said, adding that the criminal prosecutor did not press charges against other family members, but ordered her brother detained.

The victim’s husband refused to press charges against the suspect, a source close to the investigation told The Jordan Times.

The victim became the seventh woman to be killed in a so-called honour crime in Jordan since the beginning of the year.

She is also the third woman to be killed for reasons related to family honour in May.

Source: The Jordan Times

Every time something as atrocious as this happens in my country, I feel a piece of me has died. When I think about it, I feel that I am powerless except to shout from the bottom of an abyss. There has to be something you and I can do about it, I hate to think we are so insignificant in the face of organized and legalized murder. What can we do?

I got this video as a forward from several people. Apparently, a mouse was spotted in the meat display section at Carrefour in City Mall Amman. I can’t say this is the precise location of the video, but the people around do talk Jordanian. One man is telling the employee in the video “Oh no we WILL videotape this, because we are paying money in this place.”

Download the clip here:
MouseCarrefour

هل تؤيد تعديل القانون المتعلق بقضايا جرائم الشرف؟
أؤيد بشدة (55 % )
أؤيد (12 % )
لا أؤيد (11 % )
أرفض بشدة (22 % )
عدد الأصوات : 2862

Al Ghad.

في مثل بحكي : صار للخرى مره و صار يحلف بالطلاق. عزيزي القارئ فهمك كفاية

Horrific news this morning, another woman killed for the sake of a myth called honor:

Criminal Prosecutor Amjad Kurdi on Saturday charged a 23-year-old man with the premeditated murder of his younger married sister for reasons related to family honour, official sources said.

Kurdi also charged the victim’s father, mother and sibling of complicity in premeditated murder in connection with the drowning of the 22-year-old at dawn on Saturday.

The 23-year-old suspect, an electrician who got engaged a week before the murder, then placed his sister’s body in the trunk of the car, drove back to Amman, headed to the Jabal Hussein Police Station and informed officers on duty that he murdered his sister to “cleanse his family’s honour”, the source added.

The victim, who was married almost two weeks before the incident, was returned to her family home on Friday by her husband, who questioned “her fidelity”.

The victim’s family interrogated her and she allegedly told them that “she knew a man but was not involved in an affair with him” so they beat her until she almost fainted, the source told The Jordan Times.

The victim tried to resist and informed her brother that she did nothing wrong, but “he did not listen and killed her,” the source added.

Read the full story here

This is the second woman to be slaughtered in cold blood by a male sibling this week, the 6th since the start of 2008. Nobody knows if the husband’s allegations were accurate, the family never bothered and killed the girl anyway, and now how can we ever be sure what went on?* The woman was married so she must have lost her virginity, and the husband decided to report her “infidelity” after two weeks of marriage. At the sound of the word “honor” the victim’s family was taken by some demonic myth and butchered their own daughter.

Will this killer also walk and be hailed a champion of honor?

*Please note that the woman’s being or not being in an affair of sorts should not have spelled out her death sentence. There is no excuse for murder, and least of all for murder in the name of honor. All justifications for that, real or fabricated, should be made illegal.

A new atrocity in the name of female genitalia honor was committed in Jordan two days ago. Al Ghad reports that a man killed his 20-something, married and pregnant, sister by shooting her repeatedly in the head. The man then handed himself in and claimed his motive was defending the family’s honor.

The story in Al Ghad does not clarify exactly what the situation was that led to the young woman’s, and her baby’s, death. But there is mention that her brother suspected she was having an affair with a relative. That begs the question: how come the man who’s engaged in an improper relationship with a woman is rarely, if ever, treated with the same cruelty that the woman is subjected to, i.e. death?

In another story, a 19-year old girl was sentenced to serve 15 years in prison (originally to hang to death but the verdict was reduced) for poisoning four members of her family. The story goes that the girl poisoned her parents and two brothers because they had accused her of stealing some money, and let her brother beat her up, in the week prior to the murders. The girl felt she needed to avenge herself and stated that she wanted to “harm them” only and not to kill them when she presented them with poisoned juice, but they died.

There is no excuse for murder that a rational person would hide behind. But, given the situation in our societies, women are extremely marginalized and at the same time there are many doors open to them to pursue education and careers. The resentment resulting from prejudice against them when they have achieved just as much, if not more, than their male counterparts is bound to take shape one way or the other. You can only repress someone for so long, and then they’ll explode in your face and you won’t like it.

If that girl’s family had prevented her brother from beating her up upon accusing her of theft, she would not have been so angry and frustrated with her situation. If that other young woman’s family had cared to check the murderous brother’s actions and attitudes, there would not have been a woman and an unborn baby dead today. A large part of the reason many women are angry is because when they speak up they are violently silenced, when they dare to ask a question they are ridiculed, and when they demand their rights they are robbed of what little privileges they already have.

I am saddened by this current state of affairs. It makes my heart bleed to see the brutality of the patriarchal system that sees women not as companions and equals, but as followers and subjects. This won’t last, though, because hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.

In today’s news, the Jordan Times reported the following:

Criminal Prosecutor Tareq Shoqerat on Sunday charged a 70-year-old man with the manslaughter of his daughter during a family brawl in Karak at dawn, official sources said.

The 30-year-old victim, who was not identified by officials, was shot twice in the face and head, allegedly by her father, while she was attempting to stop a fight between him and one of her siblings, one official source said. The victim died instantly, the source added.

It’s definitely a good thing that the man’s crime was treated seriously, seeing as the victim is not only female, but also his daughter. These two conditions usually render crimes committed by male relatives against female family members extremely insignificant and very often legally and socially condoned.

The man was angry at his son, and shot his daughter (who stood between the two men) supposedly by accident. The criminal part of the affair is obvious, but how is this situation any different from a man shooting his daughter because he suspects she is damaging the family’s honor? In both cases the man is angry, the daughter is not proven guilty, and oftentimes is not at all guilty (think autopsy that proves she, and her honor/hymen, are intact). So how come legal authorities and society itself look the other way and let murderers out of prison after serving a modest 6 months when the word “honor” is mentioned by virtue of the infamous article 340:

Any man who kills or attacks his wife or any of his female relatives in the act of committing adultery or in an “unlawful bed” benefits from a reduction in penalty.

Is that not giving men a “license to kill” in the name of an imaginary term invented by men themselves? Any man can kill his sister in Jordan for reasons like taking over her finances or her share in inheritance, and he can simply cite honor as his motive, and it would not matter if this woman is not found “guilty” of adultery during her autopsy, and society would hail the murderer as an honorable man.

I am willing to bet that if that 70 year old man cited honor as his motive for killing his daughter, which might be his lawyer’s tactic in the near future — you never know, he would be allowed to walk free and celebrate his 71st birthday at home. The irony.

I just got this as a forward. I thought it as a very expressive caricature on the situation of real estate prices in Jordan. Owning an apartment has turned into a mission impossible — it requires a Bond kind of guy and a Bionic Woman kind of girl to manage to do it.